I'll Be Your Blue Sky
Marisa de los Santos, 2018
HarperCollins
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062431936
Summary
The bestselling author revisits the characters from her beloved novels Love Walked In and Belong to Me in this captivating, beautifully written drama involving family, friendship, secrets, sacrifice, courage, and true love.
On the weekend of her wedding, Clare Hobbes meets an elderly woman named Edith Herron. During the course of a single conversation, Edith gives Clare the courage to do what she should have done months earlier: break off her engagement to her charming—yet overly possessive—fiance.
Three weeks later, Clare learns that Edith has died—and has given her another gift. Nestled in crepe myrtle and hydrangea and perched at the marshy edge of a bay in a small seaside town in Delaware, Blue Sky House now belongs to Clare. Though the former guest house has been empty for years, Clare feels a deep connection to Edith inside its walls, which are decorated with old photographs taken by Edith and her beloved husband, Joseph.
Exploring the house, Clare finds two mysterious ledgers hidden beneath the kitchen sink. Edith, it seems, was no ordinary woman—and Blue Sky House no ordinary place.
With the help of her mother, Viviana, her surrogate mother, Cornelia Brown, and her former boyfriend and best friend, Dev Tremain, Clare begins to piece together the story of Blue Sky House—a decades-old mystery more complex and tangled than she could have imagined.
As she peels back the layers of Edith’s life, Clare discovers a story of dark secrets, passionate love, heartbreaking sacrifice, and incredible courage. She also makes startling discoveries about herself: where she’s come from, where she’s going, and what—and who—she loves.
Shifting between the 1950s and the present and…lternating voices…, I’ll Be Your Blue Sky is vintage Marisa de los Santos—an emotionally evocative novel that probes the deepest recesses of the human heart and illuminates the tender connections that bind our lives. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 12, 1966
• Where—Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Virginia; M.F.A., Sarah Lawrence College; Ph.D., University of Houston
• Currently—lives in Wilmington, Delaware
Marisa de los Santos achieved her earliest success as an award-winning poet, and her work has been published in several literary journals. In 2000, her debut collection, From the Bones Out, appeared as part of the James Dickey Contemporary Poetry Series.
De los Santos made her first foray into fiction in 2005 with the surprise bestseller Love Walked In. Optioned almost immediately for the movies, this elegant "literary romance" introduced Cornelia Brown, a diminutive, 30-something Philadelphian with a passion for classic film and an unshakable belief in the triumph of true love.
In her 2008 sequel, Belong to Me, de los Santos revisited Cornelia, now a married woman, newly relocated to the suburbs, and struggling to forge friendships with the women in her new hometown.
Her third novel, Falling Together, released in 2011, recounts the reunion of three college friends, whose friendships dissolve as everything they believed about themselves and each other is brought into question.
The Precious One, published in 2015, follows the two half-sisters who meet for the first time as they struggle to please their narcissistic, domineering father.
Extras
From a 2008 Barnes & Noble interview:
• De los Santos' love affair with books began at a young age. She claims to have risked life and limb as a child by insisting on combining reading with such incompatible activities as skating, turning cartwheels, and descending stairs.
• I'm addicted to ballet, completely head-over-heels for it. I did it as a little kid, but took about a thirty year hiatus before starting adult classes. I do it as many times a week as I can, but if I could, I'd do it every day! In my next life, I'm definitely going to be a ballerina.
• I'm terrible with plants, outdoor plants, indoor plants, annuals, perennials. I kill them off in record time. I adore fresh flowers and keep them all over my house all year round because they're beautiful and already dead, but you won't find a single potted plant in my house. So many nice people in the world and in books are growers and gardeners, but the sad truth is that I'll never be one of them.
• I'm an awful sleeper, and the thing that helps me fall asleep or fall back to sleep is reading books from my childhood. Elizabeth Enright's Melendy series and her two Gone Away Lake books, all of the Anne of Green Gables books, Little Women, The Secret Garden, the Narnia books, and a bunch of others. I have probably read some of these books twenty, maybe thirty times. I read them to pieces, literally, and then have to buy new ones.
• I am crazy-scared of sharks and almost never swim in the ocean. Yes, I know it's silly, I know my chances of getting bitten by a shark are about the same as my chances of becoming president of the United States, but I can't help it.
• My favorite way to spend an evening is eating a meal with good friends. The cheese plate, the red wine, the clink of forks, a passel of kids dancing to The Jonas Brothers and laughing their heads off in the next room, food that either I or someone else has cooked with care and love, and warm, lively conversation-give me all this and I'm happy as a clam.
• I adore black and white movies, particularly romantic comedies from the thirties and forties. I love them for the dialogue and for the whip smart, fascinating, fast-talking, funny women.
• When asked what book that most influenced her career as a writer, here is her response:
I read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was ten, I can't count how many times I've read it since, and every single time, I am utterly pulled in. I don't read it; I live it. I'm with Scout on Boo Radley's porch and in the colored courtroom balcony, and my heart breaks with hers at Tom Robinson's fate. Over and over, the book lifts me up and sets me down into her shoes. I remember the wonder I felt the first time it happened, the sudden, jarring illumination: every person is the center of his or her life the way I am the center of mine. It changed everything. I know that sounds dramatic, but it's true. That empathy is the greatest gift fiction gives us, and it's the biggest reason I write. (Author bio and interview adapted from Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
A lovely rumination on the choices we make, with characters we’ve loved for years.
Romance Times
Love and mystery surround a darker thread about the safety of women in this complex and moving tale… The author doesn’t sugarcoat the violence that the women have suffered,… [t]his novel is both lovely and powerful.
Publishers Weekly
De los Santos here revisits the next generation of her beloved characters, moving the family saga forward with this engrossing story of unshakable love, personal ethics, and a commitment to life's larger truths. —Bette-Lee Fox
Library Journal
De los Santos brings her signature style, wit, and charm while weaving in beloved characters from her previous novels.…This tender, genuine, and joyful novel is one to savor.
Booklist
The novel moves back and forth between Clare's current romantic quandary and Edith's difficult life in the '50…. De los Santos writes with disarming fluidity even when her plot takes far-fetched turns, but her heroine's inexhaustible perfection grows cloying.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. When Edith first steps into Blue Sky House, she feels her husband Joseph’s presence everywhere, and she experiences the house as "forthright and decent and kind." When Clare enters the house decades later, she also feels a human presence. Have you ever found a house or some other specific place to have a personality?
2. Clare admires her fiance, Zach, as a person who "tries so hard to be good," even when it doesn’t come easily to him, and she appreciates his desire to be different from his cold, judgmental family. Have you ever known a person like this? Do you understand why Clare would be attracted to these qualities?
3. What do you make of Clare’s relationship with Zach?
4. Edith and Joseph are both photographers. How do their photographs reflect their personalities?
5. Edith feels that she does not "fit" into the social world of small town 1950s. Can you relate to her discomfort?
6. When Edith and Joseph see the flock of white herons take flight, Joseph says, "That was you. You, you. That’s what you have been to me. Exactly." What do you think he means by this?
7. What do you make of Edith’s decision to take George Graham up on his proposal, in spite of the risks?
8. Why do you think Edith decides to start keeping the "shadow ledger"?
9. What do you think of Clare’s relationship with Dev? Do you understand her decision to go to a different college from him and later to break up with him?
10. Why do you think Clare decides to ask Dev to help her solve the mystery of Blue Sky House?
11.What do you make of Edith’s friendship with John?
12. When Clare is out in Edith’s canoe, she has the realization that "[S]omethings you decide and some things you choose and some things just are." Do you know what she means? Have you ever felt this way?
13. Early in the novel, Joseph tells Edith, "I’ll be your blue sky." Later, Edith tells Clare, "The ones who look like home are home. They’re where you go." Do these sentiments resonate with you?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
The Editor
Steven Rowley, 2019
Penguin Publishing
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780525537960
Summary
From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus comes a novel about a struggling writer who gets his big break, with a little help from the most famous woman in America.
After years of trying to make it as a writer in 1990s New York City, James Smale finally sells his novel to an editor at a major publishing house: none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Jackie—or Mrs. Onassis, as she's known in the office—has fallen in love with James's candidly autobiographical novel, one that exposes his own dysfunctional family.
But when the book's forthcoming publication threatens to unravel already fragile relationships, both within his family and with his partner, James finds that he can't bring himself to finish the manuscript.
Jackie and James develop an unexpected friendship, and she pushes him to write an authentic ending, encouraging him to head home to confront the truth about his relationship with his mother.
Then a long-held family secret is revealed, and he realizes his editor may have had a larger plan that goes beyond the page. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Raised—Portland, Maine, USA
• Education—B.A., Emerson College
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Steven Rowley is an American author with two bestselling books to his name: his debut, Lily and the Octupus, published in 2016, and his second novel, The Editor, which was released in 2019.
Rowley, at the time, a 43-year-old paralegal and screenwriter, had sold several unproduced screenplays before writing a short story about the death of his dachshund, Lily, to cope with his grief. Rowley's boyfriend encouraged him to expand it into an novel.
Rowley wrote Lily and the Octopus in 100 days and submitted it to approximately 30 literary agents, who all declined to represent him. Rowley said of the manuscript, "I was proud of it as a piece of writing, but I never thought that this was going to change my life."
Intending to self-publish, Rowley hired freelance editor Molly Pisani, who later pitched the novel to her former colleague, Karyn Marcus of Simon & Schuster. Impressed by the quality of the book, Marcus forwarded it to Simon & Schuster editor-in-chief Marysue Rucci. According to Marcus:
I woke up to an email that [Ms. Rucci] had sent me at 3 in the morning, saying "this book is incredible, I wept real tears, you must buy it." … We knew immediately it was going to be a big book for us, and the advance certainly reflected that.
In April 2015, Publishers Weekly reported that Marcus had acquired the novel for Simon & Schuster in a "nearly seven-figure" book deal. The Hollywood Reporter noted that the offer "was made with unusual speed," with The New York Observer calling it "a timeline unheard of in the slow-paced publishing industry." (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 7/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
Filled with whimsy and warmth, the Lily and the Octopus author’s second novel centers on the complex relationship between a fledgling writer and his fabulous editor, the latter of whom becomes a mentor, friend, and maternal figure. Oh, and she happens to be Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but that’s Mrs. Onassis to you.
Oprah Magazine
Steven Rowley is the best-selling author of Lily and the Octopus, and he's honestly outdone himself with The Editor.
Cosmopolitan
[A] delightful slice of historical fiction (Must List).
Entertainment Weekly
[A] sharp, funny sophomore novel.
Town and Country
A journey of self-discovery.… Ultimately a story not about celebrity but about family and forgiveness.
Time
The Editor… sweetly evokes a mature Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In 1990s New York, James Smale is an obscure first-time novelist, but his editor is world-famous. In this delicately observed tale the steely Jackie becomes not just the midwife of the angsty gay Smale's manuscript, but of a wider reconciliation.
Sunday Times (UK)
(Starred review) [A] poignant tale of a new author’s breakout hit… under the guidance of… Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.… Rowley deliberately mines the sentiment of the mother/son bond, but skillfully saves it from sentimentality; this is a winning dissection of family, forgiveness, and fame.
Publishers Weekly
[A] struggling young writer James Smale suddenly [lucks] out when editor Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis buys his novel. But he's drawn heavily on his own dysfunctional family and can't face finishing the manuscript, so Mrs. Onassis sends him home to address his conflicted relationship with his mother.
Library Journal
While diving deep into questions of identity, loyalty, and absolution within the bonds of family, Rowley… soars to satisfying heights in this deeply sensitive depiction of the symbiotic relationships at the heart of every good professional, and personal partnership.
Booklist
As this novel is already on its way to the screen, one can only hope that the first few scenes come off better on film than they do on paper…. Even if you have Jackie Kennedy—and this is a particularly sensitive and nuanced portrait of her—you still have to have a plot.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The Editor is centered on a woman who looms larger than life in our history: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. How did the Jackie of the novel compare to your own imaginings of the former first lady?
2. Ithaca, as both a place and a story, is a recurring idea in the novel. Do you think it takes on a particular meaning? If so, what is it?
3. Imagine you had the opportunity to work closely with a major historical figure. Who would you pick?
4. James has been a struggling writer for years. But his big break isn’t a happy one initially. How does it affect his relationships, with Daniel, with his family? What does his success do to his own sense of self and personal history?
5. As his editor, Jackie pushes James to reconnect with his family in order to write a more authentic ending to his novel. How do you think realism and personal intimacy impact storytelling? Are endings that ring more true ultimately more satisfying?
6. In her own way, Jackie slowly reveals parts of her personal life to James over the course of their relationship. How does this change James’s perception of her?
7. The book’s epigraph comes from the musical Camelot by Lerner and Loewe, and Jackie herself references Camelot in a later scene with James. President Kennedy was said to be attracted to the Arthurian legend, the idea that history is made by great heroes with moral clarity, and the idea of a Camelot has become a shorthand for the Kennedys’ brief time in the White House. What acts of heroism does James see in both Jackie and his mother?
8. Talk about the different endings James strives to achieve throughout the story: with the manuscript, with his father, with his biological father, with his mother. How are each of these connected? Do any of them lead to the others, and are they ever really achieved?
9. What do you imagine happens next for James? For his mother? For Daniel?
10. Like James, would you ever write a novel about your real life? How would you balance the autobiographical and the fictional? Would you ever feel comfortable sharing it with your family and friends?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
Camino Island
John Grisham, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385543026
Summary
A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.
Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.
Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.
But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 8, 1955
• Where—Jonesboro, Arkansas, USA
• Education—B.S., Mississippi State; J.D., University of Mississippi
• Currently—lives in Oxford, Mississippi and Albermarle, Virginia
John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer, politician, and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers. He has written more than 25 novels, a short story collection (Ford County), two works of nonfiction, and a children's series.
Grisham's first bestseller was The Firm. Released in 1991, it sold more than seven million copies. The book was later adapted into a feature film, of the same name starring Tom Cruise in 1993, and a TV series in 2012 which "continues the story of attorney Mitchell McDeere and his family 10 years after the events of the film and novel." Eight of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, Skipping Christmas, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and his first novel, A Time to Kill. His books have been translated into 29 languages and published worldwide.
As of 2008, his books had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. Grisham is one of only three authors to sell two million copies on a first printing; the others are Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling.
Early life and education
Grisham, the second oldest of five siblings, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda Skidmore Grisham and John Grisham. His father was a construction worker and cotton farmer; his mother a homemaker. When Grisham was four years old, his family started traveling around the South, until they finally settled in Southaven in DeSoto County, Mississippi. As a child, Grisham wanted to be a baseball player. neither of his parents had advanced education, he was encouraged to read and prepare for college.
As a teenager, Grisham worked for a nursery watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor. Through a contact of his father, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at the age of 17.
It was during this time that an unfortunate incident made him think more seriously about college. A fight broke out among the crew with gunfire, and Grisham ran to the restroom for safety. He did not come out until after the police had "hauled away rednecks." He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college.
His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating." He decided to quit but stayed when he was offered a raise. He was given another raise after asking to be transferred to toys and then to appliances. A confrontation with a company spy posing as a customer convinced him to leave the store. By this time, Grisham was halfway through college.
He went to the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland. Grisham drifted so much during his time at the college that he changed colleges three times before completing a degree. He graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a BS degree in accounting.
He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law planning to become a tax lawyer. But he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1983 with a JD degree.
Law and politics
Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of $8,000. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.
With the success of his second book The Firm, published in 1991, Grisham gave up practicing law. He returned briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who had been killed on the job. It was a commitment made to the family before leaving law to become a full-time writer. Grisham successfully argued his clients' case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
Writing
Grisham said that, sometime in the mid-1980s, he had been hanging around the court one day when he overheard a 12-year-old girl telling the jury how she been beaten and raped. Her story intrigued Grisham, so he began to watch the trial, noting how members of the jury wept during her testimony. It was then, Grisham later wrote in the New York Times, that a story was born. Musing over "what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants," Grisham took three years to complete his first book, A Time to Kill.
Finding a publisher was not easy. The book was rejected by 28 publishers before Wynwood Press, an unknown publisher, agreed to give it a modest 5,000-copy printing. It was published in June 1989. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on his second novel, the story of an ambitious young attorney "lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared." The Firm remained on the the New York Times' bestseller list for 47 weeks and became the bestselling novel of 1991.
Beginning with A Painted House in 2001, the author broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South, but continued to write legal thrillers. He has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction.
In 2005, Grisham received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award. The award is presented annually by the Tulsa Library Trust.
In 2010, Grisham started writing legal thrillers for children 9-12 years old. The books featured Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old boy, who gives his classmates legal advice—everything from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. His daughter, Shea, inspired him to write the Boone series.
Marriage and family
Grisham married Renee Jones in 1981, and the couple have two grown children together, Shea and Ty. The family spends their time in their Victorian home on a farm outside Oxford, Mississippi, and their other home near Charlottesville, Virginia.
The Innocence Project
Grisham is a member of the Board of Directors of The Innocence Project, which campaigns to free unjustly convicted people on the basis of DNA evidence. The Innocence Project argues that wrongful convictions are not isolated or rare events but instead arise from systemic defects. Grisham has testified before Congress on behalf of the Project and appeared on Dateline on NBC, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and other programs. He also wrote for the New York Times in 2013 about an unjustly held prisoner at Guantanamo.
Libel suit
In 2007, former legal officials from Oklahoma filed a civil suit for libel against Grisham and two other authors. They claimed that Grisham and the others critical of Peterson and his prosecution of murder cases conspired to commit libel and generate publicity for themselves by portraying the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally inflicting emotional distress. Grisham was named due to his publication of the non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. He examined the faults in the investigation and trial of defendants in the murder of a cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, and the exoneration by DNA evidence more than 12 years later of wrongfully convicted defendants Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz. The judge dismissed the libel case after a year, saying, "The wrongful convictions of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz must be discussed openly and with great vigor."
Misc.
The Mississippi State University Libraries maintains the John Grisham Room, an archive containing materials related to his writings and to his tenure as Mississippi State Representative.
Grisham has a lifelong passion for baseball demonstrated partly by his support of Little League activities in both Oxford, Mississippi, and Charlottesville, Virginia. He wrote the original screenplay for and produced the 2004 baseball movie Mickey, starring Harry Connick, Jr. He remains a fan of Mississippi State University's baseball team and wrote about his ties to the university and the Left Field Lounge in the introduction for the book Dudy Noble Field: A Celebration of MSU Baseball.
In an October 2006 interview on the Charlie Rose Show, Grisham stated that he usually takes only six months to write a book and that his favorite author is John le Carre. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/6/2013.)
Book Reviews
If parts of Camino Island feel like Grisham phoned it in, the bulk of it makes you think the author had a rip-snorting time writing it. I certainly did reading it. The story kicks off in high gear with a heist of priceless manuscripts from Princeton…. The stunt is so ingenious it’s impossible not to find yourself on the side of the crooks, rooting for them to pull it off. READ MORE …
Philip J. Adler - LitLovers
Sometimes, though, Grisham gets a bit too relaxed, letting his dialogue become both simplistic and florid.… Yet these flaws don’t impede the jolly appeal of the novel’s storytelling. Grisham has said that he and his wife dreamed up Camino Island during a long car ride to Florida, and the book provides the pleasure of a leisurely jaunt periodically jolted into high gear, just for the fun and speed of it.
Ken Tucker - New York Times Book Review
[A] fresh, fun departure from his normal fare. Oh, don’t worry, Grisham-ites. Smart plotting, clever criminals and law-enforcement types are all here, but this one stays out of the courtroom. Instead, we go into the inner sanctums of … bookstores. Say what? Sheer catnip for book critics like me, and I think readers who don’t usually gravitate to Grisham will get a kick out of Camino Island.
USA Today
A theft of priceless books from a library, a book dealer who dabbles in the black market of stolen manuscripts, and a novelist who is recruited for a daring mission all add up to what sounds like the ideal beach read.
Library Journal
A light caper turns into a multilayered game of cat and mouse in a story that, as with most of Grisham's crime yarns, never gets too complex or deep but is entertaining all the same.…How all these little threads join up is a pleasure for Grisham fans to behold: there's nothing particularly surprising about it, but he's a skillful spinner of mayhem and payback.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime, use our Generic Mystery Questions.)
GENERIC DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Mystery / Crime / Suspense Thrillers
1. Talk about the characters, both good and bad. Describe their personalities and motivations. Are they fully developed and emotionally complex? Or are they flat, one-dimensional heroes and villains?
2. What do you know...and when do you know it? At what point in the book do you begin to piece together what happened?
3. Good crime writers embed hidden clues in plain sight, slipping them in casually, almost in passing. Did you pick them out, or were you...clueless? Once you've finished the book, go back to locate the clues hidden in plain sight. How skillful was the author in burying them?
4. Good crime writers also tease us with red-herrings—false clues—to purposely lead readers astray? Does your author try to throw you off track? If so, were you tripped up?
5. Talk about the twists & turns—those surprising plot developments that throw everything you think you've figured out into disarray.
- Do they enhance the story, add complexity, and build suspense?
- Are they plausible or implausible?
- Do they feel forced and gratuitous—inserted merely to extend the story?
6. Does the author ratchet up the suspense? Did you find yourself anxious—quickly turning pages to learn what happened? A what point does the suspense start to build? Where does it climax...then perhaps start rising again?
7. A good ending is essential in any mystery or crime thriller: it should ease up on tension, answer questions, and tidy up loose ends. Does the ending accomplish those goals?
- Is the conclusion probable or believable?
- Is it organic, growing out of clues previously laid out by the author (see Question 3)?
- Or does the ending come out of the blue, feeling forced or tacked-on?
- Perhaps it's too predictable.
- Can you envision a different or better ending?
8. Are there certain passages in the book—ideas, descriptions, or dialogue—that you found interesting or revealing...or that somehow struck you? What lines, if any, made you stop and think?
9. Overall, does the book satisfy? Does it live up to the standards of a good crime story or suspense thriller? Why or why not?
(Generic Mystery Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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Paris By the Book
Liam Callanan, 2018
Penguin Publishing
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101986271
Summary
A missing person, a grieving family, a curious clue: a half-finished manuscript set in Paris. Heading off in search of its author, a mother and her daughters find themselves in France, rescuing a failing bookstore and drawing closer to unexpected truths.
Once a week, I chase men who are not my husband…
When eccentric novelist Robert Eady abruptly vanishes, he leaves behind his wife, Leah, their daughters, and, hidden in an unexpected spot, plane tickets to Paris.
Hoping to uncover clues—and her husband—Leah sets off for France with her girls. Upon their arrival, she discovers an unfinished manuscript, one Robert had been writing without her knowledge … and that he had set in Paris.
The Eady women follow the path of the manuscript to a small, floundering English-language bookstore whose weary proprietor is eager to sell. The whole store? Today? Yes, but Leah's biggest surprise comes when she hears herself accepting the offer on the spot.
As the family settles into their new Parisian life, they can't help but trace the literary paths of some beloved Parisian classics, including Madeline and The Red Balloon, hoping more clues arise. But a series of startling discoveries forces Leah to consider that she may not be ready for what solving this mystery might do to her family—and the Paris she thought she knew.
At once haunting and charming, Paris by the Book follows one woman's journey as her story is being rewritten, exploring the power of family and the magic that hides within the pages of a book. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1968 (?)
• Raised—Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
• Education—B.A., Yale; M.A., Georgetown University; M.F.A., George Mason University
• Awards—Edgar Award (nomination)
• Currently—lives in Shorewood, Wisconsin
Liam Callanan is an American author and associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. His novels include The Cloud Atlas (2004) and All Saints (2007), and Paris by the Book (2018).
Callanan earned his BA at Yale, his MA (both in English) at Georgetown University, and an MFA in creative writing at George Mason University.
Currently, Callanan is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he teaches creative writing. He has served as the Chair of the English Department and coordinated the Ph.D. in Creative Writing program. He also conducts workshops in creative writing for graduate students at other universities.
In addition to his teaching and writing Callanan is the creator and co-executive producer of the Poetry Everywhere animated film series, which is an offshoot of an effort to spread poetry by means of video displays on Milwaukee County Transit System buses.
Writing, etc.
Callanan's fiction includes The Cloud Atlas (2004, not to be confused with David Mitchell's novel of the same title), All Saints (2007), the short story collection Listen (2015), and the novel Paris by the Book (2018).
In addition to writing, has contributed short stories to a number of small magazines and literary journals (print and online) including The Awl, Blackbird, Caketrain, Crab Orchard Review, failbetter, Phoebe, Southern Indiana Review, and The Writer's Chronicle.
With the worldwide success of the book and the film Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, some confusion has arisen between that work of science fiction and Callanan's unrelated 2004 novel, which is set in Alaska during World War II and the 21st century. He has written on the confusion of titles in the online essay, "Ways In Which The Movie Cloud Atlas Has Changed My Life."
Personal
He and his wife Susan live with their children in Shorewood, Wisconsin. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/12/2018.)
Book Reviews
(Starred review.) [S]ublime.… Callanan has crafted a beautifully-drawn portrait of a woman interrupted set among the exquisite magic of Paris, where life frequently imitates art and the ghosts of the past linger just out of sight. The mystery of Robert’s fate keeps the pages turning, but the real story lies in Leah’s rediscovery of herself.
Publishers Weekly
Plane tickets left behind by Leah's vanished husband, offbeat novelist Robert Eady, send Leah and her daughters to Paris. There, an unfinished manuscript points them to an English-language bookstore that Leah impulsively buys. From award-winning journalist and Edgar finalist Callanan.
Library Journal
Callanan has woven a tale of grief, resentment, and the everyday madness of equivocating the unfathomable.… Callanan’s sweet and compulsively readable tale invites readers to fall in love with Paris, Leah, and her family.
Booklist
A pointedly literary romance …about a Wisconsin woman who moves to Paris …after her husband's disappearance.… While Callanan writes about the difficulties of family relationships and the creative process with a knowing hand, the magical Paris he creates feels forced and threadbare.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for PARIS BY THE BOOK … then take off on your own:
1. Did you connect with the Eady women—Leah and her daughters? What do you make of them?
2. What about Robert? He is somewhat of an enigma, not just to us the readers, but to his wife. How would you describe him…and his demons?
3. As we learn more and more about the Eady's marriage, what were the problems fraying the edges of the relationsip?
4. Does Leah really want Robert back? Or is she (secretly) relieved to be out from under his unhappiness? What do you think?
5. Why do YOU think Robert left? Why do you think Leah, even though abandoned, remains in love with him? Would you still love someone who abandoned you?
6. Liam Callanan uses a female as his narrative voice. How well does he inhabit a woman's perspective? Does he capture the essence of a lonely, heart-broken woman and exhausted single parent?
7. Paris by the Book is replete with literary references. Talk about how it explores the impact literature has on our lives and how we carry around with us remnants of books we've read. In what way, for instance, does Leah's love of The Red Balloons (movie and book) mirror—symbolically—her experiences in Paris?
8. Does the author do a good job of capturing Paris in all its richness and magic?
9. In discussing the pace of the book, some readers felt it took too long to get moving. Others were swept along from the beginning and turning pages rapidly by the end. What was your experience reading Paris by the Book?
10. Are you satisfied with the ending—or were you hoping for a different outcome?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)
Lost Roses
Martha Hall Kelly, 2019
Random House
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781524796372
Summary
The million-copy bestseller Lilac Girls introduced the real-life heroine Caroline Ferriday. Now Lost Roses, set a generation earlier and also inspired by true events, features Caroline’s mother, Eliza, and follows three equally indomitable women from St. Petersburg to Paris under the shadow of World War I.
It is 1914, and the world has been on the brink of war so often, many New Yorkers treat the subject with only passing interest.
Eliza Ferriday is thrilled to be traveling to St. Petersburg with Sofya Streshnayva, a cousin of the Romanovs. The two met years ago one summer in Paris and became close confidantes.
Now Eliza embarks on the trip of a lifetime, home with Sofya to see the splendors of Russia: the church with the interior covered in jeweled mosaics, the Rembrandts at the tsar’s Winter Palace, the famous ballet.
But when Austria declares war on Serbia and Russia’s imperial dynasty begins to fall, Eliza escapes back to America, while Sofya and her family flee to their country estate. In need of domestic help, they hire the local fortune-teller’s daughter, Varinka, unknowingly bringing intense danger into their household.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Eliza is doing her part to help the White Russian families find safety as they escape the revolution. But when Sofya’s letters suddenly stop coming, she fears the worst for her best friend.
From the turbulent streets of St. Petersburg and aristocratic countryside estates to the avenues of Paris where a society of fallen Russian emigres live to the mansions of Long Island, the lives of Eliza, Sofya, and Varinka will intersect in profound ways.
In her newest powerful tale told through female-driven perspectives, Martha Hall Kelly celebrates the unbreakable bonds of women’s friendship, especially during the darkest days of history. (From the publisher.)
Visit the author's website for background on Lost Roses.
Author Bio
Martha Hall Kelly is a native New Englander who splits her time between Atlanta, Georgia; New York City; and Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. She spent a number of years in the advertising world as a copy writer before turning to writing historical fiction. Lilac Girls, her bestselling debut was published in 2016, which was followed in 2019 with that novel's prequel, Lost Roses.
She has three (mostly grown) children. (Adapted from Atlanta History Center.)
Book Reviews
Inspired by true events, just like its predecessor, and just as well-researched, Lost Roses is a remarkable story and another testament to female strength. This sweeping epic will thrill and delight fans of Lilac Girls and readers of historical fiction alike.
Popsugar
[L]ively, well-researched…. Some story lines strain credibility (coincidences and melodramatic cliffhangers abound)…. Nevertheless, Kelly memorably portrays three indomitable women who triumph over hardships and successfully brings a complex and turbulent time in history to life.
Publishers Weekly
Sofya has by far the most compelling story line, and some readers may get restless when reading about Eliza's relatively low-stakes activities.… Overall, this novel builds to an emotionally satisfying conclusion, and readers who loved Lilac Girls will likely be keen to learn more about the Ferridays. —Mara Bandy Fass, Champaign P.L., IL
Library Journal
(Starred review) Epic.… [Martha Hall] Kelly’s gift is bringing to life and to light the untold stories of women and families far away from the war front yet deeply affected by the decisions of leaders and the efforts of fighters. Fans of historical fiction… will want to clear their calendars when Lost Roses comes out.
Booklist
Though the writing is rich and vivid with detail about the period, the storytelling is quite a bit slower than in Kelly’s captivating debut, and both the plot and relationship development feel secondary to the historical scene-setting. A nuanced tale that speaks to the strength of women.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. You meet three very different heroines in Lost Roses: Eliza, Sofya, and Varinka. Who did you identify with most and why?
2. Mother-daughter relationships play a vital role in Lost Roses. How did these relationships impact Eliza, Sofya, and Varinka’s lives? Compare Eliza’s mother to Varinka’s. Were they both good mothers? In what ways? How did Sofya’s stepmother, Agnessa, affect Sofya and Luba emotionally? How did their mother’s legacy play a continuing role in their lives?
3. Caroline Ferriday, the protagonist of Lilac Girls, is a teenager in Lost Roses. Eliza’s real-life relationship with her daughter Caroline evolves over the course of the book. What did you like/not like about their portrayal?
4. Luba, whose name symbolizes love, is a key character in Lost Roses. Did you feel she was an important character in the story? What do you think of the author’s decision to open and close the novel with Luba’s voice?
5. Sofya had to make some impossible choices in the novel—choosing to leave her family, and then her child, in order to try to save them. How did you feel about her decisions? Did you agree with them? Why or why not?
6. Varinka and Taras have a complicated relationship. Did you find it compelling? Do you believe she loved Max? Why or why not? Were you shocked by the twist in her ending?
7. How did you feel when Eliza had a second chance to experience love with Merrill? Did you believe in their friendship and then love affair?
8. Were you satisfied with Sofya and Cook’s reunion? How do you imagine their relationship evolved after the novel ended?
9. Is there a particular scene in Lost Roses that has stayed with you? What will you remember most about this novel?
10. Did you learn new things about this period in history? Do you plan to read more—fiction or nonfiction—about the Russian Revolution?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)